GitHub recently changed the default branch name of new repositories from master
to main
, which is great for inclusivity. But I haven't seen anybody mention how to change the default branch name used by the git init
command.
Changing it manually
You can pass the -b
flag to the git init
command to manually change the default branch name:
git init -b main
This is OK, but it's a bit of a pain to do this manually for every new repository. It would be nicer if we could just run git init
and have the default branch name be main
instead of master
.
Changing it automatically
As of git 2.28, it's possible to set the default branch name used by the git init
command:
git config --global init.defaultBranch main
Now when you run git init
, the default branch name will be main
instead of master
.
You can run git --version
to check which version of git you're on. If you're on a version below 2.28, you'll need to update for this to work.